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From Icarus and Making a Murderer to Heroin(e) and Amanda Knox, Netflix‘s original documentaries have a reputation for being superb. Even when you keep in mind those lofty standards, Dirty Money is something special. Executive produced by Alex Gibney, the docu-series watches as six separate documentaries connected by stories of corporate greed and the outrage of its filmmakers. Dirty Money has the ability to perfectly explain complicated governmental systems one minute and inspire viewers to scream at their televisions the next.

According to Alex Gibney, it was incredibly important for all six directors to tell these stories in their own styles rather than attempting to make their interpretation of a Gibney documentary. “You know, I’ve been part of — as a producer, not as a director — I’ve been part of a series years ago called The Blues. It was executive produced by Martin Scorsese and it was a bunch of fiction filmmakers doing docs on the Blues. Scorsese did one, Clint Eastwood, did one, Mike Figgis, Antoine Fuqua,” he said. “Their voice was present in each one of those docs, but they had a reverence for what was really happening. And so that was what I wanted to happen here.”

Because of this focus, each director intentionally chose a documentary subject that was personal to them. “It was weird because I literally did hear this thing on the radio, and it was like, ‘What if Volkswagen got Alex Gibney to investigate?,'” the director said about his episode “Hard NOx.” The 75-minute episode starts with Gibney’s feelings of betrayal about the VW diesel emissions scandal before diving into just how horrific this cover-up really was. “I was already pissed off and then I saw that, or I heard it. And I thought ‘Yes, I’m digging in.’ Because it was personal to our family. My wife was really angry.”

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Carr’s decision to investigate Valeant was also related to her personal life. “There’s a lot of addiction in my family. I don’t like what’s happening with pills and American public. I’m really mad when this happens,” she said. “I think [some pharmaceutical companies] are really trying to find the consumer and keep them stuck on pills forever.”

Carr also pointed to the corporate intrigue of Bill Ackman and Michael Pearson as a reason why she was so interested in pursuing Valeant as a subject. “I was just like, ‘There is so much here for us to explore.'”

But one of the most shocking episodes in this consistently shocking series is Jacobson’s “Cartel Bank.” The scandal at the center of the episode is told largely by Anabel Hernández, a Mexican investigative journalist who is best known for her work exposing the collusion of government officials and drug lords. The episode is almost completely filtered through Hernández as she covers this huge scandal and explains the risks involved with being a journalist in a country where corruption is often closely associated with journalism. “I think for me the most important part of the filmmaking process is that connection that happens whether it’s before the interview or during the interview. And the depth of that can vary, and if you’re lucky, you know you can go really deep and really connect with someone,” Jacobson said. “I think that’s at the heart of most of what I do and I think that’s something that does run through all the of the filmmakers’ work.”

However, even though the documentaries in Dirty Money cover vastly different subjects in different styles, the project works beautifully as a series. “I think [the episodes] are connected thematically,” Gibney said. “There’s a certain visual or graphic connection with the opening graphic. And it was Erin who found the song that she used.”

That opening song is Run the Jewels’ “Lie, Cheat, Steal”, and it was chosen for a very specific purpose. “Run the Jewels has a long-standing tradition of caring about issues,” Carr said. “It’s about finding the commonality in the artistic community.”

“But I just think we got really lucky to use that song because people care about these things and this show. Hopefully we’re covering issues that people will care about but also demonstrates we can change things,” she added.

Gibney pointed to the characters at the center of this docu-series as a main reason why the title is so emotionally successful. “In Kristi [Jacobson]’s film you have this idea of these investigators really who are consumed with the need to expose this stuff. So it’s their quest that we become excited about. It’s not just a series of facts, it’s who they are and what motivates them,” he said. “There’s a lot of character in these stories which I think is what also sets them apart.”

At the time of the interview, Gibney said he had not heard encountered any blowback from the subjects of Dirty Money. “The other thing about this series that I think is impressive is that all the filmmakers are very sharp in terms of buttoning up the fact that they’re unimpeachable,” he said. “However you approach a film stylistically, in terms of characters and so on, at the other end to come at it and make sure you do your job from the legal perspective so that you’re unimpeachable. That’s hugely important.”

Jacobson credits Jigsaw and Netflix’s dedication to research as why the docu-series is legally “unimpeachable.” “I would add to that, as a filmmaker working on my own, that being a part of Jigsaw and Netflix on this series was not just artistically and creatively exciting, but the level of the depth of the research and the fact-checking and the double fact-checking and the legal phone calls,” Jacobson said. “In the end I think it was the reason why the blowback has been nonexistent.”

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During a panel moderated by Gibney for the series, actor and filmmaker Fisher Stevens (Before the Flood) also revealed a shocking story about his episode. Stevens directs “The Confidence Man,” which stands as a deep dive into the shady business practices of Donald Trump and The Trump Organization. “I was doing a lot of political activism when [Alex] called, and I thought it might be good to channel this energy into a film. I had no idea how brutal this would be. I got an ulcer while making this film,” Stevens said.

One of the challenges of “The Confidence Man” is focusing on a specific topic when your subject is as large as Donald Trump. Stevens said he originally devoted a lot of the documentary to a Mexican wrestler who is a very successful heel because of his Trump persona, and he had many interviews that focused on Trump’s sex life. “The interview with Russell Simmons was 50 percent about Donald Trump’s sex life, ironically. And it was very tempting to use that footage and veer off into that world,” he said. “We found that if we didn’t focus on people who knew him or worked with him or dealt with him it just didn’t work. So that was really challenging.”

Because the documentary is limited to focusing solely to Trump’s business practices, “The Confidence Man” spends a lot of time on Atlantic City. Stevens explained the importance of the Atlantic City story as well as why the documentary is dedicated to the now deceased Senator Jim Whelan. “Jim Whelan was the mayor of Atlantic City for 12 years, 12 of the years when Donald Trump was very involved in Atlantic City,” Stevens said. According to the director, Whelan, who was a state senator when Stevens came to interview him, strongly disliked Trump but had never given an interview before.

“We went to his house in Atlantic City, we set up shop. He had just had surgery about a month before — it was a big week. And we had this beautiful shot on his balcony, overlooking Atlantic City. And he was wearing a T-shirt that said Atlantic City, and he said, ‘I’m going to put on a suit and tie.’ And we said, ‘No Jim, you look great. You look great in that T-shirt,'” Stevens said. The crew waited for Whelan for a while before Stevens asked Whelan’s assistant to look for the senator. “She screams, ‘Does anyone know CPR?’ And my cameraman did, and we ran upstairs, and Jim was laying dead on this pile of suits up on his bed.”